There are 8 million deaths in the world each year from smoking, placing tobacco products an order of magnitude of harm above any other consumer product on the market. It is fundamentally unfair that the tobacco industry should reap huge profits yet never pay for the harm their products cause, leaving individuals, families, employers and governments to pay the massive costs.

Costs to individual tobacco and nicotine users include costs of disease, disability and premature death, including job and income loss. If you live or work with a smoker, you are at risk of serious health issues and even death from others’ smoke. Money spent on tobacco leaves less money for food, education and holidays. Yet the tobacco and vape industries continue to target youth with images of wealth, camaraderie and success.  

In particular, costs to tobacco farmers include serious negative environmental, health and social impacts, and — as shown in Yunnan province in China — tobacco farmers earn more when they grow other crops. Costs to employers of smokers include decreased workplace productivity due to smoke breaks, absence rates due to illness, and premature death, thus the loss of trained workers. Costs to governments include huge medical costs, environmental costs from fires, costs of deforestation from cutting down trees to cure tobacco, and costs of cleaning up billions of cigarettes, cigarette packs, matches, and lighters discarded every day. In addition, there are the costs of accidents, damage to buildings and fabric, the loss of the use of arable land that could grow food, the loss of foreign currency for countries that import foreign cigarettes, and the costs of smuggling, which deprives governments of tobacco tax revenue. Overall, tobacco is a massive drain on the economy. It should not be left to the taxpayer to shoulder these costs.

I urge all governments to apply the “polluter pays” principle, with the industry held financially accountable for the costs of the health and economic harm their products cause. But litigation — or more plainly, how to make the tobacco industry pay compensation to those who suffer at its hands — is not easy. Suing the tobacco, vape, or nicotine industries remains costly, time-consuming, lengthy, and overly complex in many countries. It is difficult for governments, and usually far outside the reach of the average employer or individual.

The last two Conferences of the Parties of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control came up with interesting and simpler suggestions for governments to charge the industry and hold it accountable — particularly in places where courts are slow, costly, or inaccessible, which is the reality in much of the world.

Fees, levies, and a tobacco compensation fund are not about punishment. They are about remedying injustice and shifting tobacco’s financial burden back to the industry that has known, concealed, and profited from those harms for decades

The global policies recommended reflect a shift in emphasis: From a single path through taking the industry through the courts, toward simpler, practical, nonjudicial approaches to liability — through administrative sanctions, tribunals, taxation, and compensation tools similar to those already in use in existing environmental, anticorruption, human rights, financial, and competition law.

Cost recovery through annual fees or levies on tobacco manufacturers could be penalties and surcharges as viable means to recover costs, deter harm, and serve as compensation mechanisms to mitigate tobacco industry misconduct.

For example, Canada, with massive public support for the idea, has adopted a fee — not a tax — requiring tobacco manufacturers, based on market share, to reimburse the national government for the annual cost of the government’s tobacco strategy. The plan is to expand this fee to include the vape industry. Canada’s example demonstrates what is straightforwardly possible, but it should be regarded as a starting point for collecting a long-overdue debt.

Tobacco levies or surcharges could be used to fund health promotion, the medical and environmental costs of tobacco-related damage, or to compensate individuals for the harm they suffer. Examples of compensation funds already exist in other fields, such as compensation funds for diseases related to vaccine side-effects and asbestos. It is time for a tobacco compensation fund (or nicotine compensation fund to cover all forms of tobacco and nicotine products), based on the “polluter pays” principle.

Fees, levies, and a tobacco compensation fund are not about punishment. They are about remedying injustice and shifting tobacco’s financial burden back to the industry that has known, concealed, and profited from those harms for decades.

The author is the director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control based in Hong Kong, Special Advisor to the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, and a senior policy adviser to the World Health Organization.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.